As the internet of things becomes more of a reality, each of those “things” will need to communicate with each other and centralized servers. In some instances, the things have a wired connection to the internet making communication straight forward. In other instances, wired connectivity is not practical and the devices must rely upon wireless or cellular connections to connect to the Internet. Particularly with cellular services, the cost of connection can become quite expensive.
Many cellular machine-to-machine (m2m) implementations are available at present that are suitable for applications which rarely upload data, such as premises fire/burglar alarm systems, or automobile trouble alert systems. Such applications are purely event-driven by actions that rarely occur, and so can take advantage of low-data-usage cellular plans that make cloud-based monitoring services very affordable for the consumer.
Other applications, such as Energy Management Systems (EMS), however, poise a unique challenge for cellular m2m communication in that heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) or refrigeration equipment, temperature sensors, and energy usage sensors provide constantly changing data that must be collected on the order of a sample-per-minute from every data source. It is the nature of an EMS to collect “performance vs. time” data for subsequent post-analysis of complex inter-relations that can identify poorly performing equipment in need of maintenance, or even poor control settings by operators.
With the use of standard data-compression algorithms, data generation, for even a modestly sized facility, can exceed 100 MB/month and would require currently unaffordable cellular data plans for the monitoring service market. Even so, standard data-compression is only efficient when used on rather large blocks of data that may represent several hours worth of data collection; a limitation that ignores the “timeliness” requirement that some EMS data, such as a refrigeration unit failure to maintain temperature or a freezer door left open by an employee, needs immediate attention. What is needed is a system and method that can allow for the transmission of large data blocks to maximize compression effectiveness while still allowing for real time event management.